Hi Aki, Excellent analysis. True, VOIP can be used to greatly lower costs of the call itself, but latency, and the ability to offer a similar quality of service is the problem. Round Trip Time (RTT) for an IP packet from Kenya to USA/Europe is approx 500ms (milliseconds). Compare that to 50ms on a packet from Ghana, India or South Africa and it is clear that the competitive quality is higher in those countries. What's the difference? Kenya uses satellite for international transport. Those other countries have submarine fiber optic as a medium. The performance differences here are like comparing going to Mombasa by car against going by airplane - except in this case the airplane ride costs less than the car! Amazing but bandwidth on satellite in this part of Africa costs 8-10 times and sometimes up to 20 times more. Than bw on fiber optic!!!! The advent of TEAMs into Kenya will be the entry of Kenya into true global ICT competitiveness. Regards, Brian Sent from my iPhone On 21 Jun 2008, at 5:56 PM, aki <aki275@googlemail.com> wrote:
After research and on the issue of expensive bandwidth, below is a basic bandwidth usage cost analysis for a call centre.
For a call centre, a BPO purchases a cir duplex 1Mbit/s @ Usd 5000 ( eg 325,000/- ksh ). After compression by voip equipment, it is possible to get 64 voice sessions per mbit. This means a total of 64 voice channels can be used at any given time. If the call centre is offering full time capacity services at 20 hours/day = 1200 minutes. 64 * 1200 = 76800 voice minutes * 30 = 2,304,000 total voice monthly minutes/325,000 = 7 / 64 = 0.11 kshs per voice channel.
From the calculation, each voice call costs 0.11 kshs per minute. Is this cost too expensive to prevent a call centre from operating?
Corrections are welcome. With Rgds.
On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 12:54 PM, Wambui Wakarema <wambuiwakarema@yahoo.co.uk
wrote:
Is the ICT Board aware that the BPO industry in Kenya is in crisis? Most of the BPO's and Call Centres have suspended operations due to the high cost of bandwidth. They are all waiting for the subsidy that never was. When is the subsidized bandwidh going to be released? There may be no BPO's to use it by the time it is released - if ever.
Added to this is the struggle to get BPO work both locally and from overseas. Has the Board developed a strategy for marketing Kenya as an outsourcing destination? Am not talking about haphazard marketing activities and expos. What is the long term strategy? Can industry players have a look at this strategy or plan?
Wambui Wakarema
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